


Gone Tonight

by Artificial Pichitinha (Pichitinha)



Category: RuPaul's Drag Race RPF
Genre: Angst, F/F, Hopeful Ending, Lesbian AU, girl au
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-04
Updated: 2018-04-04
Packaged: 2019-04-18 10:50:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,315
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14211543
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Pichitinha/pseuds/Artificial%20Pichitinha
Summary: She exits the bathroom just as Katya is closing the door with the food in hand, and for a brief moment Katya smiles at her and it’s just like it was a year ago, when things were good and easy, not broken like they are now.In which Trixie isn’t ready to talk things through, but Katya tries it anyway.





	Gone Tonight

**Author's Note:**

> Hi hello how are you all on this fine afternoon? I hope you’re doing well and ready to read something a bit different than the content I usually publish! A few notes: is the flooding and whatever I mention realistic? Probably not but I don’t care because I needed things to happen ok fight me. This fic has not been proofread because I am super impatient and wanted to post this soon but I’m hoping you’ll find only minimal errors! I am a bit worried about this fic - I feel it’s easy to be unrealistic or even insensitive with what I wrote about but this is a work of fiction that is indeed full of cliches so I really hope you’ll enjoy it regardless even if it might be a little off reality I guess. Thank you [Rosie](https://crackerdyke.tumblr.com/) and [Conny](http://connyhascontrol.tumblr.com/) for reading this over and trying to help/reassure this pile of anxiety that speaks right now. Anyway, without further ado, here goes nothing!

When Trixie is faced with the facts, she does her best to ignore them. They aren’t pleasant, they are the very opposite of everything she wants to be aware of right now, and she really isn’t going to entertain her crappy reality becoming crappier.

She’s never seen so much chaos in the city before. She’d left work maybe an hour later than usual, the last song she was working on taking a little while longer than she expected, and the storm she was met with outside scared her to death. She knew things were bound to be bad, but not to the level she’s seeing now.

It’s been an hour and a half and the rain seems to only be getting worse. Traffic is a mess and public transportation is completely unreliable and she’d decided half an hour ago that waiting would only lead to waiting all night, so she might as well just try to leave and get anywhere else other than the studio she was crammed in with several of her coworkers.

No ubers or taxis or anything want to take her to where she wants to go. Her apartment isn’t that far away, but it’s on the other side of town and apparently the bridge was blocked.

She called all of her friends, asked all of them for shelter and having the ok from all, she said she’d try to go and would let them know where she was headed once she finally got a cab.

The bridge to the other side is also blocked.

Apparently she’s pretty much stuck in a very small radius of the city with no access to anywhere else and she doesn’t know what to do. She’s managed to get a taxi and she asks the driver to just take her to a hotel. He tells her he will if she really wants to, but that he can assure her they won’t have a vacancy - he's been dropping people off all night.

She lets a bit of rain fall on her face as she talks to him through the car window and she uses that to let a couple of tears fall as she goes back under the roof and takes her phone with shaking hands. She only knows one person that lives in that area. On a normal day it’d be a ten minute drive, today it might be an hour, but it truly is the only place she could even consider going. She takes deep breaths, tries to calm her now fast-beating heart, and presses call. Part of her wishes she won't answer.

_“Trixie?”_

Her voice is, as Trixie expected, confused. Surprised, even.

“Katya, hey. How are you?”

_“Uh, good. I’m good. How are you?”_

It’s awkward and formal and Trixie can feel her gut twisting already. She almost regrets doing this, but the she remembers she has no other option.

“I’m ok. I’m… I’m stuck at the studio and all the bridges are blocked. I can’t make it home.”

_“Oh?”_

Given her tone, Katya still doesn’t get what Trixie wants. She’ll have to _say_ it.

She takes a deep breath and tries to fish some courage right from deep within.

“All the hotels in the area are booked. I… you’re literally my last option.”

_“Oh. Okay.”_

She leaves out this horrible laugh, clearly forced and not funny at all, and Trixie realizes how rude she was - especially when she’s asking for such a big favor.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean-”

_“You did."_ Trixie's sure there's a smile on her face, but it's definitely humorless. _"But that’s okay, I get it. Do you wanna crash here?”_

She _doesn’t_. But she also doesn’t have any other option.

“Unless you can’t. Or don’t want to. I’ll figure something out.”

_“I thought I was literally your last option?”_

Trixie is quiet, can’t find the words, thinks back of the old crappy chairs at the studio and thinks that maybe she could just sleep there.

“I-”

_“I’m kidding. Of course you can stay here. I’ll text you the address and I’ll fix the couch for you while you’re on the way."_

“You’re a lifesaver.”

_“It’s the least I could do._ ”

Trixie’s heart skips a beat. Before she can even think of responding, though, Katya is ending the call.

_“See you in a few, I’ll order chinese.”_

And then the tone is dead and Trixie feels like she is a bit dead too.

Katya texts her address like she promised, but Trixie doesn’t even glance at it. She hates herself, but she knows it by heart, has never been able to forget it. The taxi driver she was talking to earlier is still there, and he opens the door when he sees her exit the building. She’s extremely grateful.

She tells him where they’re going, knows all the references and places around and feels a bit sick at how nostalgic it all is to her.

It takes them half an hour, but soon she starts to recognize the neighborhood and knows they’re close. She closes her eyes and tries to calm herself down, feels her hands shaking a bit and her breathing uneven.

_It’s just Katya_ , she tells herself. _You’ve slept on her couch several times before. It’ll be fine_.

Her phone vibrates with a message from Shea when they are just a couple of streets away.

_Shea: you figure out what to do?_

_Trixie: … yeah_

_Shea: where are u staying?_

Trixie sighs and looks up, sees the last corner before they reach Katya’s street fast approaching.

_Shea: … ur staying at katya aren’t u?_

_Trixie: it’s the only place available_

_Shea: ok. i’m here if u need anything_

_Trixie: what could you possibly do all the way there in chicago?_

_Shea: call and interrupt if anything that shouldn’t happen, happens_

Trixie sighs but before she can think of replying, the driver calls her up, “We’re here.”

She pays him and exits quickly, finds shelter at the reception where she tells which apartment she’s visiting. She waits as they call Katya to let her go in, and texts Shea.

_Trixie: nothing’s gonna happen_

_Shea: that’s what you said last time_

Trixie lets her fingers hover on the keyboard, types a few letters and then deletes them. She doesn’t know what to say. She really doesn’t want to to relive all of this _now_.

“You can go up, ma’am,” the receptionist informs her and she makes her way to the elevator, her heart beating out of her chest as she tries to pull herself together.

She hasn’t seen Katya in three months. Before that, she hadn’t seen her in six months.

It has been nine months and she isn't over it yet.

The door to the elevator opens when she reaches the tenth floor and Trixie has to put on a normal face sooner than she expected, because Katya has the door open and is leaning on the frame, waiting for her.

Trixie doesn’t miss the way a deep breath leaves Katya’s body, as if she was not ready to see her.

Trixie isn’t either.

“Hey,” she says for lack of a better thing, doesn’t know what else she could possibly put into words right now that would be light and normal, and not deep and heavy like she feels.

“Hey,” Katya replies, nods weirdly before moving to the side and giving her passage. “Come in.”

Trixie thanks her quietly, makes her way past her and tries not to let her wet hair drip everywhere.

“I found a few clothes that might fit you, if you want to take a shower? I’ve left some towels in the bathroom.”

“Uh, yeah, a shower would be great, I’m kind of cold.”

Trixie smiles a bit at her offer and immediately feels like she overshared with the cold information. It’s not much - it’s isn’t anything, really, small talk she might do at a bus stop - but she feels like she didn’t have to - shouldn’t - share that. It's odd.

“Oh, I’ll turn up the heater.” Katya starts moving immediately towards the little table besides the couch where she apparently still keeps all of the remote controls for the house.

“You don’t have to, it’s fine-”

“Trixie, go take your shower. I’ll warm up the house and wait for the food. I- I ordered the same as you always did, I hope that’s ok.”

Trixie can feel the pang in her chest like a knife. She remembers, of course she does, they’d eaten together so very many times before. And that’s what hurts the most, the weight of their history together, the ghost of the laughter and hushed conversations they shared in the past, the heavy silence that’s been sitting on Trixie’s head for the past nine months, an empty space where Katya’s voice used to be.

“Yeah, that’s ok.”

She nods and Katya nods back and they just stand there, quietly, looking at each other from opposites sides of the room without anything to say or do. It’s pathetic, but at least Trixie’s not pathetic alone. It fills her with some twisted guilt the fact that Katya’s discomfort gives her some satisfaction.

“Uh, I’ll go shower now,” she announces eventually, when the tension in the room is too much to bare and she knows Katya will end up breaking and _talking about things,_ which she definitely doesn’t want. She turns around quickly, doesn’t give her time to react, and makes a beeline to the bathroom.

The scent of Katya’s shampoo hits her as soon as she’s inside, closing the door quickly behind her. She closes her eyes for a second, tries to find a breath inside of her so she won’t go insane.

She remembers the first time she slept over at Katya, back when Katya still lived in Boston and she was visiting. They’d been friends for a few months then, met through friends of friends, and she had booked a job in Boston and asked Katya to host her - or maybe she had booked a job in Boston _because_ she wanted to ask Katya to let her stay there, but that doesn’t matter, not anymore. She remembers realizing she forgot her shampoo and using Katya’s every morning before the waffles filled breakfasts, and she remembers getting faint smells of it for a few weeks afterwards every time she’d wear an outfit she’d worn in Boston.

She opens her eyes, urges herself to ground herself in the present. It isn’t much more helpful, this bathroom is one she’s much more familiar with, and the thought makes her turn to the bathtub and search for the red dots that have been there since Katya accidentally dropped nail polish one day and never bothered to clean, always saying she’d do it “next week”. It’s still there.

She turns on the water and while she waits for the cold droplets to become hot, she removes her damp clothes. She avoids the mirror, is weary of how she looks right now - not in appearance, per se, like it or not Katya’s seen her in her worst days, but she fears for her expression. She doesn’t know what her face is telling Katya and she’s scared of finding out.

She stays under the water for longer than she should, urging it to wash away her worries and her heartache. She knew that coming to Katya would be a bad idea, but she didn’t think that she’d feel like that after mere minutes of interaction.

She takes her time drying her hair and body, looks at the loose shirts and shorts that Katya had put on the counter for her until she finds the one that looks to be more comfortable. They smell like the brand of fabric softener that Trixie had convinced her to start using and it’s with that feeling that Trixie realizes that nothing about this night will be easy, even if they eat in silence in separate rooms and pretend the other isn’t there. Memories linger on the walls of Katya’s place, and even if they didn’t, Trixie’s mind has that in check as well. She’ll just have to toughen up and go through this, however the night might unfold.

She exits the bathroom just as Katya is closing the door with the food in hand, and for a brief moment Katya smiles at her and it’s just like it was a year ago, when things were good and easy, not broken like they are now.

She clears her throat and sits down on the table and Katya follows her in silence. It’s weird and mechanic, they’d usually eat on the couch or the living room floor with the TV on on some movie or show that they’d only pay attention to for five minutes before getting distracted. She wants to say something, to cut the silence that seems to hurt her more and more at each passing second, even if she knows that talking will hurt just as much.

“So, how have you been?” Katya ends up asking, her face clearly as uncomfortable as her own. She tries to remind herself that no matter how much she resents what Katya did, she’s the one that put them in this situation tonight. She’s part to blame as well.

“Good. Busy.” She doesn’t really know what else to say, if she’s honest. She _has_ been busy, has been focusing more and more at work every time her free time gives her time to think. And she has been good - well, ish. She's been as good as she could, since Katya left. But she can’t say that.

Truth is that Trixie knows that what affects Katya about the situation is guilt. She’s not sad about what happened - she can’t be, she’s the one that _did it_ \- but she feels bad for Trixie. And Trixie hates that it affects her this much, hates that it’s been months and months and she can’t let it go. She hates that Katya pities her.

“That’s good.” Katya replies after a long silence, like she finally accepts that Trixie won’t say more. “I’m glad you got the job at the studio, I know how much you wanted it.”

She should, Trixie gushed about it to her several times in the past, told her how much she’d love to work there, how that was her dream job and she’d do practically anything to get it. She thinks back to those time and can now see that Katya was always supportive but never enthusiastic. She knows why, now.

“Yeah, I’m glad things started falling into place.”

Katya opens her mouth then, but closes it after a second. She looks back at her food and Trixie realizes that as long as they’re talking, as long as there are words leaving their mouths, she has less time to focus on Katya’s face and wonder how she feels. And that’s good, so she makes an effort.

“What about you?”

Katya considers her, takes her time in chewing her food and swallowing it down with her juice. It looks like she’s trying to decide on what to say, and Trixie worries for a moment about what she will hear.

“I’ve been… I don’t know. Not good. Not busy.”

Trixie nods, feels her mouth go dry. She’s being honest, she’s opening the floor for discussion and Trixie doesn’t want to enter that, she doesn’t want to allow for a scenario in which they could potentially _talk things over_. Trixie’s not ready to talks things over. She doesn’t know if she ever will be.

“Oh?” Is all she manages to sound out, can’t find it in herself to even be polite and ask her why. Katya responds anyway, though, always much less worried about societal conventions. And Katya probably _does_ want to talk it over. She always does, and that’s one of the issues, isn’t it?

“You know I like to keep busy and all so I thought it’d be fine to take the reigns and be my own boss and book shootings whenever I want. But I’ve been slacking lately. I want to be busy, but- but I haven’t been feeling good and that doesn’t help.”

Trixie understands that. She only started overworking herself a few months ago, because at the beginning she was the complete opposite, calling in sick several times and just overall not giving all of herself.

She knows why she’s like that though, she knows why she was broken and needed time to heal. Maybe she doesn’t get why it hit her _so hard_ , but she gets why she was heartbroken.

She can’t figure out why Katya’s like that though. Not after she went after everything she wanted.

“Do you miss Europe?” Trixie asks before she can stop herself, finds it to be only plausible reason. She’s never understood why Katya came back, if she’s honest.

Katya shrugs, acts much more nonchalant about it than Trixie would’ve expected. “I miss certain aspects of it. But not really, I’m much better here.”

Trixie bites her lips, doesn’t want to speak without thinking again. Why is she back? _Why did she leave?_

“Have you visited your parents since you came back?” Trixie decides to shift the focus a bit, knows it’ll be safer to talk about her family - and knows specially how important it is to Katya.

Katya smiles lightly at that. “They were actually here two weeks ago, they went back to Boston last saturday.” She stops, considers again, and averts her gaze. “They asked about you.”

Trixie swallows. “How are they?”

“Oh, you know them. Excited about life, worried about the future.”

“That’s _you_.”

“True.”

They laugh a little and for those small seconds it’s almost like they’re okay. But then the laughter dies down, way quicker than it would have in the _good ol’ days_ , and silence is their only company again.

They’ve both finished eating so Katya gets up and starts clearing the table. Trixie gets up, unsure, starts moving to help.

“No, it’s fine. You can sit down, I’ll be back in a bit.”

Trixie doesn’t want to be rude and leave her to take care of the mess by herself, but at the same time she’d love a few more minutes to herself, to maybe try to pull herself together again. Looking at Katya she thinks that’s exactly what she wants as well.

She agrees and sits down, gets her phone for the first time since entering the house and the only new message she has is from Shea.

_Shea: sorry trix, u know i worry. hope everything goes well, pls call me if u need ok?_

She sighs and locks her phone again, sets it down on the little coffee table. She might be a proud person but right now, if there was any way Shea could help, she’d ask. Unfortunately, there isn’t.

She looks around the place with attention, tries to place the details she can notice are different. She has on different curtains now, but that’d been way overdue anyway so she’s proud of her for finally buying new ones - even if they are horrific.

Then her eyes fall on her shelves and her heart skips several beats when she sees herself. It’s in the back, sort of hidden by other pictures and paintings, but it’s definitely there, a picture of the two of them that someone - she thinks maybe Jinkx, but she isn’t sure - had snapped on the beach without them noticing. Katya looks happy in that picture - and so does she. She _was_ happy, she remembers it vividly.

She diverts her look, tries to focus on the other pictures that are displayed. All of her friends are there, some of them repeated several times, and even though she knew that Katya hadn’t cut ties with anyone when she left, it stings to see it. She isn’t mad at them for talking to her and she isn’t bitter about it either, what truly gets to her is that for years no one knew Katya better than she did, and now she’s met with the knowledge that Katya’s life went on when they stopped talking and that probably several things happened that all of her friends know and she doesn’t. She feels clueless, excluded, doesn’t know what to do with all the space in her brain that’s still there waiting to be filled with every tiny detail about Katya.

And then she realizes that that probably goes both ways, that maybe her friends talk to Katya about her - she’s fairly certain Katya didn’t have a “no Trixie talk” rule like she did for Katya - but definitely not that much, not as much as she’d tell Katya otherwise. There’s no way Katya knows what she’s been up to, these are a few months of her life that Katya probably will never know about. She can’t pinpoint exactly how she feels about that, but it for sure isn’t a good feeling.

Katya comes back into the room right then when Trixie’s about to have a crisis and the jump scare that she causes is enough to ground Trixie again.

Until she realizes that they’re together again and that things are still - obviously - weird.

She sits down at the other end of the couch and they both look in the direction of the turned-off TV, shoulders straight, posture correct. It’s late enough that they could technically just go to sleep, but Trixie knows she hasn’t slept before midnight in at least five years and Katya is most definitely the same.

“Do you work tomorrow?” Katya asks eventually, probably tired of the quiet - or the noise in her head which is usually ten times louder when no one’s talking - but without looking at Trixie.

“No, I only work Saturdays if we’re running late on a project or something. Do you? Cause I’ll be out really early!”

“No, no, don’t worry.” She looks at her then, sighs audibly and forces herself to relax her back on the couch. “I had a yoga class but that’ll probably be cancelled because of the storm.”

Trixie nods, knows that she’ll for sure wake up to the sight of Katya doing yoga somewhere in the house, knows that she needs the movements to ease her morning anxieties, especially now that she quit smoking.

Unless she picked it up again. The thought leaves Trixie breathless and she doesn’t know why.

“Are you still… hm… an ex-smoker?” She tries to phrase it as best as she can.

Katya smiles a little, seems proud. “Yeah. My last cigarette is still the same one as it was last time.”

Trixie smiles for real for the first time that night, remembers how hard it had been for Katya to quit - remembers how hard Katya had tried _for her_. “I’m proud of you.”

And maybe those had been the wrong words because Katya averts her gaze immediately and Trixie’s sure they’re watering a bit.

“Thank you,” she manages to say and Trixie gets a bit choked up, too, maybe because of _everything_ and not just how emotional Katya sounds.

“Katya…” she starts but closes her mouth before she can figure out what to say next. She regrets it immediately, knows that she just opened the gate for precisely what she didn’t want and can feel her heart speeding up and her breath getting irregular.

It’s too soon. It’s been nine months, but it’s too soon.

“I always thought that you knew why I did it,” Katya says, like Trixie knew she would. She didn’t know _what_ she was gonna say, but she knew she was gonna say _something_. Knew she was going to dig into the wound with the alcohol soaked cotton that everyone tells Trixie is necessary but she’s been avoiding at all costs in fear of the pain. “But since I came back, I’m starting to think you don’t.”

Trixie doesn’t want to engage, wants to tell her that she’s tired and they should go to bed, wants to lie down and think about it while she tries not to cry because she is _pathetic_. And yet, a small part of her yearns to understand what happened, wants to hear Katya explain, wants to see if there’s anyway she has a patch that will fit perfectly into the void she’s left on her heart. And this part is really loud.

“I don’t. I really don’t.” The words leave her mouth choked up and she’s horrified when she realizes that tears are pooling in her eyes and dropping faster than she ever wants anyone to see it happening.

“Oh, Trix,” Katya says and starts moving closer, but Trixie raises her hand, stops her. She’s full of pity on her voice and this is the last thing Trixie wants right now. She feels sick to her stomach, can’t believe it all went downhill so fucking fast, can’t believe she’s crying out her heartbreak to the person who had broken it. “Sorry,” Katya apologizes for trying contact, goes back to the other end of the couch but keeps her figure turned to her side.

Katya gives her time and she takes it. She lets the tears fall, lets her breath get ragged and her chest feel impossibly tight as she tries not to focus on how stupid this is, on how Katya must think she’s ridiculous for acting like this. She buries her head on her hands until her sobs subdue to hiccups and only when her eyes are dry does she take a long breath and looks back at Katya.

Her face is stained with tears.

“God, Trix, you need to understand-”

“I do understand,” she cuts her, feels the weight of her emotional breakdown winning over her need to know. She’s so tired of feeling like this, she just wants to pretend nothing’s going on. “And it’s fine.” It isn’t, really, nothing about this is fine, it hasn’t been since the day she left. But Trixie can’t blame Katya for not loving Trixie like Trixie loved her. Trixie resents her leaving the way she did, but she doesn’t blame her for their fall-out. Trixie always knew that this was a possibility, that letting herself fall for someone she knew so well - and therefore _knew_ how she was - would very likely end in heartbreak. So it isn’t fine, but Trixie doesn’t want Katya blaming herself for not loving her back. Not much could have been done about that, and Trixie knows it. “I get it, I really do, and I don’t blame you. You aren’t the first one on the list. But I need you to understand why for me it’s impossible to 'be friends' or whatever it is that you said on Violet’s birthday. I hate to think that our friendship is over but I _can’t_. Please understand that.”

Katya looks taken aback and Trixie looks away. She knew that eventually they’d talk it out, that they had to, and she also knew that for her that would only lead to reascending something in her chest that she had fought for a long time to diminish. All of their friends kept telling her she needed closure, that she really should talk to Katya, that it would be good for her. Oftentimes they’d act like they knew something she didn’t, but she’d made it clear that talking about Katya was not something she wanted so they respected it. Now she’s there, following their advice, and it’s like the hole in her chest is brand new. She fears the prospect of yet another nine months tirelessly working to close it. She doesn’t know if she has it in her.

“Trix…” Katya’s voice is quiet, earnest. She moves closer and this time doesn’t stop when Trixie flinches, even if she stills keeps a couple of inches in between them. She seems to not know what to say and Trixie can’t blame her. She’s in an awkward position, Trixie wouldn’t know what to do if she was her either. So she takes this opportunity, embraces the fact that she’s already cried and said more than she thought she would, and goes on. Maybe it’ll be easier if she gets everything out.

“You were my best friend.” It’s a quiet statement and it reverberates in the room, followed almost comically by a loud thunder. She doesn’t know exactly why she’s saying it, what she’s trying to convey here - because Katya knows that. She nods, even, looks at Trixie as if she’s waiting for her to say more. Trixie feels there’s more she needs to let her know, but she has no idea what. Has no idea _how_ . “It’s been hard without you. As a friend, I mean. No one else in the world knew- _knows_ me the way you do. Even after all these months, unless you suffered memory loss, no one else even comes closer. You know everything about me.”

“I do,” Katya states before Trixie has time to continue. “I haven’t forgotten anything, how could I? And the same goes to you.” She chuckles a bit, even if it doesn’t sound funny at all. “Who else would it be?”

“You _knew_ me,” Trixie accuses, then, even if she doesn't want to. She doesn’t want to be the bitter ex, she wants none of this to ever have happened at all. But it’s too late now, it did and the words are out. She’s constantly stuck between completely understanding Katya’s actions and feeling bitter and betrayed by them. That’s why she didn’t want to talk - she knew she’d fuck it, and she also doesn’t know what she feels.

But Katya is nothing if not understanding - and again, she _knows_ Trixie. She doesn’t seem surprised at all at her words. “I did. And I fucked up.”

Trixie bites her lips, feels her eyes tearing up again. This is not what she wants. Katya’s back to the guilt and pity and that’s not what she wants. But what does she want? She doesn’t know either. She wants this dull pain in her chest to finally subside, she wants to feel free of this and start over, she wants to be herself again, but she has absolutely no idea of what to do to get there.

She wants to not have fallen in love with her best friend. She wants to never have acted upon her feelings. She wants to never have loved her so deeply.

But she can’t change that now, can she?

“I don’t want you to feel bad.” This much is true. Through all the pain and the hardships there are few things she wants more in life than for Katya to be happy. However that might come to be.

Katya snorts, shifts a little and her thigh scrapes very lightly against Trixie’s. She shivers, tries to push past that, but it’s the first physical contact they’ve had in nine months. When Katya had gotten back and they met at Violet’s party Trixie had simply nodded at her, too frozen on her spot to even shake hands. She feels the ghost of her skin lingering, wishes something so minor wouldn’t affect her so much. “How can I not, Trixie? I know I did it all wrong, I know I hurt you and I think about it everyday. I hope you know this already, but I truly am sorry.”

Trixie gets up then, needs air and knows she can’t go out in the balcony because it’s still raining heavily, she can hear it against the glass. She takes a deep breath, tries to remember the breathing techniques that Katya taught her all those years ago and then when she remembers Katya touching her back and stomach to guide her, she tries to forget it. “Uh, I need some water.”

“Of course.” Katya starts getting up, but Trixie denies quickly.

“I can get it. I-I’ll be right back.”

She moves quickly to the kitchen, feels like the walls are closing in on her and hopes against hope that she won’t have a panic attack. She’s never had one before but she knows the signs. She refuses to let it happen over a heartbreak. A heartbreak that happened nine months ago.

She finds the glass and fills it with water mechanically, barely thinks about what she’s doing and where she’s moving, and when the familiarity of it dawns on her she closes her eyes forcefully again. There really is nowhere safe in this place.

She leans against the sink, sips the water slowly, tries to even her breathing with each gulp of water she takes. She thinks about the time when the rain stops and she gets to leave, thinks about what will happen then. Will this be it? Will she never talk to Katya again? The thought is like a double-edged sword because she doesn’t know what answer to that is more frightening.

Trixie knows, of course, why this is harder than it’s ever been before. Why this time she can feel the pieces that her heart broke into, why it’s hurting and hurting and it never seems to heal. She’s thought about it endlessly over the course of these months, tried not to but found it impossible.

She’s never dated a friend before. She’s always met someone through someone or at a bar or online. She always met them with the intent of dating.

Katya had been her best friend for seven years when she first noticed how she felt. By that point, well, she already loved Katya more than almost everyone else in her life. Maybe platonically or maybe not, but she did. Katya was already someone she could never see herself without.

She should’ve listened to Shea, and Kim, and Pearl and pretty much everyone else when they told her that it was a bad idea. It really had been.

“Hey,” Katya’s voice scares her enough to get her to drop the glass on the floor, tiny pieces of glass flying around and one of them landing on her foot, making a tiny cut. “Shit, I’m sorry.”

“It’s nothing,” Trixie dismisses. She can barely feel it, leans down with Katya to try to get the bigger chunks. “Sorry for breaking your glass.”

“It was my fault.”

“No, it wasn’t.”

“Yes, it was.”

Trixie feels they aren’t talking about the glass anymore.

They put all the pieces they managed to gather away and turn to the sink to wash their hands, side by side. It’s silent as the water runs and they take turns slowly.

Katya clears her throat. “You said… you said I wasn’t the first one on the list. What does that mean?”

Trixie dries her hands, can’t look at Katya as the words she feels pathetically weightning her down leave her mouth. “You weren’t the first girlfriend who didn’t love me back.”

Katya freezes so fast, so true-to-the-word full freeze, that Trixie glances back at her for a second, worried. She’s staring at Trixie, looks heartbroken and at a complete loss for words. She blinks rapidly, eyes searching through Trixie’s entire face for seconds on end.

“You’ve spent the last nine months thinking I left because I didn’t love you?”

Now it’s Trixie who feels at a loss, maybe more heartbroken than before. Katya asked that as if she was wrong. Her heart is beating at a mile per minute.

“I’ve seen you jump from relationship to relationship, three months each, for years. I’ve stood there as you said time and time again that you don’t believe in love and forever. I knew where that was going, Katya, I don’t blame you for that.”

Katya fully touches her then, envelops her upper arm with her hand. She isn’t gripping at it, it’s a light touch that Trixie could easily free herself of. But she doesn’t, stares at the hand and back at Katya’s face several times, alarmed by her sudden movement and her expression. “God, Trixie, I did everything wrong.”

“Kat-”

“Let me speak, please. You don’t have to, but I’d love if you’d listen. Just this once.”

Trixie nods then, Katya’s hand still on her arm, her bony fingers digging lightly into her flesh. Katya looks lost, a bit, uncertain of what to say, and Trixie’s worried that whatever it is will just break her further.

“I left _for you_ . I wanted to travel and to photograph the world and to live freely and you wanted a nice job and a family. You were fast-tracking towards your dream job, you were house-hunting hand-in-hand with me. I wanted to love you in Rome, and Paris, and Lisbon and you wanted someone that wanted to settle down. I wasn’t _ready_.”

“I wanted _you_ ,” Trixie barks back, can’t stop herself. Katya’s words are buzzing in her ears, but she won’t let her throw that last sentence like that. Trixie didn’t want _someone_ , Trixie wanted _her_. She'd made that perfectly clear.

“And I wanted you.” Katya’s eyes are honest and Trixie knows she isn’t lying because she _knows_ her. There’s a lump in her throat and her skin burns where Katya’s touching her. But she still hurts.

“You left.”

“I left.”

They stand in silence, eyes interlocked, both clearly fighting back tears.

“I couldn’t give you what you wanted, Trixie. The easiest way was to go.”

“That’s exactly what you said back then, _we want different things_ . You didn’t _know_ what I wanted. We dated for five months, Katya, I never asked you for forever.”

Katya denies with her head, looks up when a tear forms up anyway. “That isn’t it, Trixie. I wanted forever with you, too, I just wanted it in a different way.”

“You never asked me. You never gave me the choice.”

“I know.”

Silence falls again, and this time it stretches. They don’t move, don’t look at each other, do nothing but take deep breaths and pretend - to the other, to themselves - that they aren’t crying.

“You didn’t have to _leave_. We didn’t have to break up, I would have understood that you wanted to travel, we could’ve been long-distance, I might even have gone with you for a few weeks or visited or- I don’t know.” She runs her hands through her hair, exhaustion screaming inside all of her limbs. “It’s like… it’s like you didn’t fight for me.”

“I was _scared_ . You know me, you know I panic and let anxiety have the best of me. But _you know me_ , so tell me you can’t see how much I regret it, how much I regret every week that passed that I didn’t try to make things right.”

Trixie looks her in the eye, and she can feel how Katya is urging every bone in her body to remain still and stare back, truthfully. It’s quiet and it’s heavy and the tension is _clear_.

And then there’s a thunder and the place goes dark.

“Shit.”

Katya squeezes her grip on Trixie’s arm, grounds them both together in the pitch dark of the place as it appears the whole neighborhood has powered out.

It’s in the quiet of the darkness that Katya finds the courage Trixie knows she’s been searching for.

“I don’t know if it changes anything. And I don’t know if it’s good or if it’s bad or how it’ll make you feel or even if I have a right to say it. But I still love you. I love you just as much, maybe even a bit more, than I did the day I left.”

Trixie doesn’t even try to hold the words in, knows she wouldn’t be able to. “I love you, too.”

She feels Katya getting closer, can feel her warm breath on her face and as her eyes are slowly adjusting to the darkness, she thinks she sees the contour of Katya’s face.

“I know what I did was wrong. I thought about coming back several times, but I thought you’d be better off without me. I shouldn’t have left the way I did, but I swear I thought that was the best for you. Not a day goes by that I don’t think about you, Trixie. That's why I came back.” She pauses. One second, then two then three. “I thought I knew what I wanted, but in reality everything falls second to you.”

Trixie doesn’t say anything, doesn’t know if there’s anything she could say. This is so, so much for her brain to handle. She feels exhausted from the night already, feels like all the emotions she could’ve possibly had overloaded her. But she stays still, feels Katya’s warmth in front of her, her other hand now ghosting its fingertips on her arm. She loves her. Nothing’s gonna change that and she knows it. Her words echo in her brain.

“Can I kiss you?”

Katya asks softly, doesn’t move an inch as she waits for an answer. Trixie knows that if she said no Katya would immediately back off and give her space. More than anything, first and foremost, Katya is a genuinely good person. That’s one of the reasons Trixie loves her so much.

That’s also one of the reasons that instead of replying, she’s the one that closes the gap. Her hands find Katya’s face and pull her in slowly, their lips meeting tentatively, calmly. Trixie can feel warmth spreading through her entire body, like spring has just come and blossomed all of the flowers. The familiar feeling sets on her chest, the smoothness of Katya’s lips are like coming home. She feels all the cliches and the songs from romance movies circling inside her, she feels like this is what she’s been waiting for the past nine months.

In a way, it is.

They kiss slowly, innocently, neither moves their hands from where they are currently, but Trixie pulls her in a little more and puts her right foot back at that, trying to ground herself better.

And she manages to step on a remaining tiny shard of glass. “Ow.”

They break apart, breathing not heavy but uneven, and search for each other’s faces that they still can’t see in the dark.

“You ok?”

Trixie nods before she realizes she won’t see. “Yeah, it’s nothing.”

They stay there, locked in an embrace, until the sound of the rain on the window is louder than their breathing. The clock on the wall is ticking and Trixie revels at how in sync it is with her heart.

“We should go to bed,” Katya suggests, and Trixie gulps to herself. Maybe Katya hears her or maybe she just _knows_ , but she adds, “We can both go to my bed and just sleep. Or I can go to the couch or you can to the couch. Whatever makes you comfortable. I just think we should rest.”

Trixie agrees and they start moving through the dark apartment, their hands clasped so they won’t lose each other and also _so they won’t lose each other_. Katya hits her knee on the bed and hisses, but then she sits down on it and pulls Trixie to sit besides her. They move in the dark, the moonlight filtering in through this window making it a little bit easier to see, and soon they’re settled on the pillows, Trixie on the same side she always slept whenever she and Katya shared a bed both before and after getting together.

Katya finds her hand again, squeezes it, and Trixie looks at her. She waits for a few seconds, hopes the moon will allow her to at least see Katy’s eyes, and it does. They’re shining.

“Give me another chance?” Katya whispers into the night, the words flowing over to Trixie’s already calm, sleepy brain.

“Yeah,” she replies softly, squeezes Katya’s hand back before closing her eyes. “We can talk more in the morning - if there are waffles.”

She falls asleep immediately, doesn’t know if Katya replied or not.

But in the morning she finds Katya doing yoga - and there are waffles.

**Author's Note:**

> If you wanna talk to me I am [@pichitinha](http://pichitinha.tumblr.com) on tumblr; please please please consider leaving me a comment right at this box below, and if you need some fluff right now, click “top” and then my username and you’ll find my other fics which are all good and happy!


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